How to Get Backlinks: The Definitive White HatLink Building Guide (2024)

D id you know that Google ranks backlinks at #3 in their list of the 200 most important ranking factors?

Backlinks are valuable for SEO because they represent a vote of confidence from one site to another. The more votes or backlinks a web page gets from other relevant pages, the more likely it is to rank on the first page of Google.

Link building has become quite tough recently, especially after Google started keeping a close eye on link building practices. If you try any spammy techniques, your site will get penalized and lose its search rankings before you can blink.

In this ultimate guide, I’ll show you how to successfully build quality backlinks for your blog using proven link building techniques which I’ve learned over years of practice.

Let’s dive right in.

What Are Backlinks?

Backlinks are links from other websites to your site or blog. They’re also called inbound links. Getting quality links to your website is important for you to rank.

Google considers backlinks as upvotes for your websites and content, which shows that the quality of your blog and your content is good.

Why Are Backlinks So Important?

As I said, a backlink is a vote of confidence that signals to Google that you have high-quality content on your blog. The more of these votes or testimonials you have from reputable sites, the better your search engine ranking will be.

Even though Google has made many changes to its algorithm, backlinks still remain a strong ranking signal.

We now know what backlinks are and why they’re so important. But we still need to get one thing out of the way…..

Link quality.

In 2012, Google introduced an update called Google Penguin to reward high-quality websites using white hat (or legitimate) backlinking methods and get rid of poor-quality websites from the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) engaged in manipulative link schemes and keyword stuffing.

Since then, even if you have thousands of backlinks, you will be penalized if you’ve gained links from manipulative link schemes, such as buying links from low-quality and irrelevant sites or through comment spam.

So, how do you get high-quality backlinks?

That’s what we’ll discuss in this next section.

What Are High-Quality Backlinks?

Before we learn ways to build backlinks to your website, let’s talk about what quality backlinks are and how you define them.

A good quality backlink has 5 characteristics:

1. They come from authoritative websites.
2. They include a relevant and keyword-rich anchor text.
3. The source domain should be related to your site.
4. Backlinks should be a do-follow link.
5. Backlinks should come from a unique referring domain.

Let’s take a close look at what each of these characteristics looks like.

1. Backlinks Should Come From Authoritative Websites

Domain Authority is the only metric you need to worry about for SEO. The higher your domain authority is, the better your chances of ranking on the first page of Google search results. When building backlinks, make sure you get them from a high-authority website.

Every SEO software uses different names to display the authority of a domain. For example, Ahrefs uses Domain Rating (DR) and Moz uses Domain Authority (DA).

Google prefers links from high Domain Rating (DR) website sources. 

For example, we got a link from neilpatel.com to our article on getting more email subscribers. Since NeilPatel.com is a highly authoritative website with a DR of 90, this backlink tells Google that our article is worth ranking on their search results for a related topic.

2. Backlinks Include a Relevant Keyword-Rich Anchor Text

You should always try to get links from an anchor text with your target keyword. According to Ahrefs, there is a high correlation between higher rankings and keyword-rich anchor text.

But be advised, you shouldn’t overdo this.

Google’s Penguin update cracks down on sites with lots of backlinks with an exact match anchor text. It’s in your best interest to use related keyword phrases in your anchor text rather than focusing solely on exact match anchor text.

3. The Source Domain Should be Topically Related to Your Site

Getting links from high-authority sites with relevant anchor text isn’t enough. You also need to ensure that these backlinks are coming in from websites closely related to your niche.

For example, if you write about diet plans on your blog, try to build backlinks from a health niche blog. In a nutshell, the website linking to you should have some sort of topical relevancy.

4. Backlinks Should Be Do-follow

There are 2 types of backlinks: do-follow and no-follow. Every backlink is do-follow unless a rel=”nofollow” attribute is added to the link. Here’s what a no-follow link looks like:

<a href=”http://example.com” rel=”nofollow”>anchor text</a>

Do-follow backlinks allow Google to follow them and reach your website. These links allow SEO juice to pass on from the source site to the hyperlinked site.

Google and other search engines don’t count backlinks with a no-follow tag. So it’s better to try and get links that are do-follow.

5. Backlinks Should Come In From a Unique Referring Domain

It’s better to get links from 100 different sites than 1,000 links from the same site.

That’s because the total number of unique referring domains strongly correlates with high SEO rankings. If you want to know how to rank higher on Google, you should aim to increase the number of referring domains to your website.

A handful of rightfully-earned links from unique authoritative sites will have a much more positive impact on your rankings than dozens of purchased links from spammy sites.

Now that we’ve defined what quality backlinks are, let’s examine how to build them.

First, I’ll talk about how to get quality links with quality content and then I’ll guide you on how to do link building the right way.

Let’s get started…

How to Get Backlinks With High-Quality Content

The best way to grab the attention of other publishers and build high-quality backlinks to your website is by publishing comprehensive, in-depth resources on your blog.

That said, websites won’t reward you with backlinks just for publishing good content. You’ll need a carefully planned SEO strategy before and after publishing the content to succeed.

As far as content goes, there are a few types of content that act as Link Magnets, which site owners love linking to.

We will be discussing a few of them below:

Research-Based Content with Original Data

If you’ve conducted a study on your industry that hasn’t been done before, there’s a high chance that people will link to you whenever they cite your data.

Having an epic piece of content can get you a lot of shares. You can use software like ReferralRock to make sharing even easier for your readers.

It all depends on how good the study is and how well you compiled the data.

For example, OptinMonster did a study where they analyzed what kind of email subject lines get the most clicks.

Since this provides great value to users and compiles a truckload of data, it attracted a lot of backlinks.

This post is STILL performing well and is bringing in a good number of backlinks every week.

List Posts and Tutorials

Moz conducted a study where they analyzed 1 million articles that got the most backlinks. The study concluded that list posts got the most backlinks, followed by tutorials.

List posts work because they break down data into a digestible format.

At Blog Tyrant, we’ve had our own fair share of success with listicles and tutorials.

Our post 101 Blogging Tips generated a decent amount of traction and we strongly emphasize that you follow the same route.

In-Depth Guides

Writing in-depth guides, just like this one, is a fantastic way to attract tons of backlinks.

You need to pack tons of relevant and useful information in each post so it becomes a source for everything related to that topic.

We love this type of content at BlogTyrant.

Many of our guides are in-depth and have yielded us tons of backlinks.

For example, our How to Start a Blog guide is still getting us lots of backlinks and traffic.

For more details about blog post length, see our guide on how long a blog post should be.

Visual Posts: Infographics, Images, Videos etc.

I’ve seen bloggers having tons of backlinking success with visual posts, such as infographics, even when they become outdated.

The reason is that data presented in visual form is easier to understand.

We conducted a survey where we asked bloggers about their blogging goals and challenges. We took all the data we got from the survey and made it into an infographic.

To this date, we still get lots of backlinks to this because it’s unique research and in infographic format.

To create your own infographics, check out the best data visualization plugins for WordPress.

To sum up, create unique content, add 10x value, and make it visually stunning. Instead of writing for search engines, write for readers and try to solve their problems. You’d be surprised to see the number of backlinks you get from this strategy alone.

Our Favorite Link Building Strategies

Every SEO guru or specialist you go to will have their own favorite link building strategies. But in the end, it’s all about picking the ones that work best for your site. 

Because we’ve been in this industry for years now, we’ll only discuss those techniques that have worked for us and got amazing results.

Let’s take a look at 4 great ways to build quality backlinks that have personally worked for us:

Resource Pages Link Building

Resource pages usually add links to various websites on the internet that are related to their topic.

These pages exist for the sole purpose of linking to valuable resources, which makes them a prime target for our link building campaign.

More often than not, the blog owners of such pages will say yes when you ask for a link to your site, provided that your article is worthy enough to be on that page.

Here is the process we take advantage of for resource page links.

To find resource pages on the internet use the following search operators:

• “Keyword” + inurl:links
• “Keyword” + inurl:resources
• “Keyword” + inurl:useful-resources
• “Keyword” + “helpful resources”
• “Keyword” + “useful resources”
• “Keyword” + “useful links”

These are just some variations of some of the search operators we use. Tinker around with them and come up with your own search queries.

You can also try and get links from .edu resource pages by adding the .edu extension as follows:

• site:.edu “your keyword”
• site:.edu “your keyword” + “resources”
• site:.edu “your keyword” + inurl:links
• site:.edu “your keyword” + “other sites”

This will give you a list of URLs you can reach out to.

Once you’re done, you’ll have to analyze the list of URLs you found.

To do this, upload these URLs to Ahrefs and check their URL Rating (UR) and Domain Rating (DR).

UR is a metric that shows how strong a backlink profile of a target URL is on a scale from 1 to 100. 

Next, you have to find content that fits best with the resource page you found. Make sure it’s relevant or all your efforts will go to waste.

Then, reach out to the bloggers of the resources pages by sending them a personalized email pitch. To find accurate email addresses, I usually use Hunter.io.

To find the email address of the domain, go to Hunter.io, enter the domain, and click on the search icon:

This will give you a list of valid email addresses.

Write a compelling subject line and email pitch, somewhere along the lines of the pitch given below. Always use personalized emails in your outreach emails. It makes it more personal and tends to get more replies.

Subject: Loved your Resources Compilation

–

Hello [First Name],

I was searching about [topic] and I stumbled upon your excellent resource page: [link].

I wanted to thank you for taking out the time and effort to compile this list. I would have never found out about [Resource they linked to] if it hadn’t been for your list.

Recently, I wrote an article on [related topic] which I believe will resonate with your audience.

Here is the link in case you want to check it out [link].

I think this might make a good addition to your post.

Anyway, thank you once again for compiling the list.

Regards,

[Your Name]

If this particular pitch doesn’t work for you, try using another style or subject line and see which one works best.

Broken Link Building

Broken Link building is one of the best and most effective ways to build backlinks to date.

So, how does it work?

Broken links are links on a web page that are no longer working. This could be due to several reasons. Big websites sometimes forget to check for 404 broken links, which can be an advantage for you.

The process is simple; you pinpoint broken links on reputable websites to the site owner as a gesture of goodwill and then pitch your own content as a replacement.

When you’re building links, you’ll come across many pages that are 404 or broken. Make it a habit to the backlink directory of such pages with the help of Ahrefs. See what kind of websites are linking to it. If you spot any high DR sites linking to that broken page, list them down and pitch your website to get it replaced.

It’s also important to check the topic of broken pages for this method to be effective. To do this, go to Web Archive and enter the URL of that page. This will show you a historic snapshot of the page when it was live and tell you what it was about. If you don’t have any article on that topic, you can always write a new one.

To do broken link building properly, follow the steps given below:

Step 1: Find pages that have lots of external links 

Pages that link out to resources have the greatest chance of having a few 404 broken links. Use the search operators we mentioned above to find resource pages.

Step 2: Check for broken links on those pages

Since resource pages have a lot of links, checking for broken links individually will take a lot time. There are two ways you can do this quickly:

1. Install Check My Links on your Chrome browser. This will automatically check all the links with a click of a button.
2. Take the URL and put it in Ahrefs. Then, go to Outgoing Links > Broken Links. This will show you all the broken links on that page.

Step 3: Pitch your own content as a replacement

Once you’ve found pages with broken links, there are two ways you can approach them.

The first approach is to contact the website that has broken links and inform them about it. Ask them if they would be willing to replace the broken links with yours.

Send them an email pitch by taking the following template as an inspiration:

Subject: There is a problem with your website.

–

Hi [First Name],

I was looking for something to read on [Topic] and I came across your article [Page Title and URL].

I was reading through it and I noticed that there were a few links that weren’t working.

[Broken URL 1]

[Broken URL 2]

[Broken URL 3]

You might want to take a look at them.

If you are looking to replace [point out a specific broken link], then you might want to replace it with an article we published recently [Page title and URL].

I hope I helped. Thanks for the wonderful write-up.

Regards,

[Your Name]

The other approach is to take the broken page and place its URL in Ahrefs to check its backlink profile.

Let’s say that the broken page you found has a lot of high DR sites pointing to it. You can write a new piece of similar content and pitch it to sites pointing to the broken page as a replacement.

This is the easiest way to earn lots of good backlinks.

Link Roundups

Certain websites link out to outstanding content every week or month. If you have content pieces worth being mentioned in such link roundups, you can always reach out to them. Here is a good example of link roundups.

Here are the steps to getting mentioned in link roundups:

• Look for link roundups in your niche using the following search operators.
  • “Keyword” + “link roundup”
  • “Keyword” + roundup
  • “Keyword” + “best of”
  • “Keyword” + this week
• Send them an email pitch
• If your email pitch is good enough you will get a backlink.

HARO – Link Building

HARO stands for help a reporter out. It’s a platform where bloggers and journalists post questionnaires on behalf of popular websites.

To start, go to their website and sign up. Then, you’ll get four emails a day filled with queries from writers and journalists.

All you have to do is answer these queries to the best of your ability. If your answers are good enough, they will be selected for publication. You can check the dashboard to see which of your pitches were approved or rejected.

Once your answers are published, the journalist/writer will give you a backlink on their website. This is a great way of getting links and building relationships with journalists from top publications.

These were some of our favorite link building strategies which we use regularly in our campaigns.

Next, I’d like to share some bonus link building techniques and tips.

Bonus Link Building Techniques and Tips

Before finishing this guide, I wanted to share some secret bonus techniques that have worked wonders for our website over the years.

Let’s take a look:

Link Reclamation

The name of this technique is quite self-explanatory. It’s the process of reaching out to websites that have mentioned your site without a backlink and ‘reclaiming’ your link. 

This happens a lot, especially in the case of big brands like WPBeginner.

Instead of feeling sorry for yourself and fretting over your mistake, reach out to them and ask the authors to kindly add a backlink to your brand mention.

You’d be surprised by the number of positive replies you’ll get. Just be polite in your pitch:

–

Hello [First Name]

I wanted to thank you for giving a shout out to [your brand] in your awesome article.

We really appreciate it.

I noticed that you forgot to link to our website, and I was hoping if you could fix that by adding a link back to our site.  That way, your readers will be able to easily find us.

Thanks once again for the shout out. Keep up the good work.

Regards,

[Your name]

But how do you find unlinked brand mentions?

The popular way is to use tools like Ahrefs, BuzzSumo, and Mention.com.

These tools will show you whenever you get mentioned without a link.

Once you find them, send an email with a similar template above and watch those links fly in.

Get Backlinks through Reverse Image Search

If you are like us and publish a lot of visual content, there’s a high chance people might be using your content without giving credit.

When you find sites that are using your visual content without attribution, you should reach out and ask them to link back to you. Most of them will comply because of the Digital Media Copyright Act (DMCA).

Use Google Images to find people using your images without a link.

Guest Post Opportunities with Reverse Image Search

One of the best ways to discover guest blogging opportunities is through reverse image search.

When you’re hunting for backlinks, you’ll come across many articles from your competitors published on different high DR Websites. 

This presents a huge opportunity, as you can pitch a guest blog to all of these sites that agreed to feature your competitors as authors.

The process is simple. All you have to do is grab a headshot of your competitor and use Google image search to see exactly which sites have featured your competitors.

Then, reach out to sites that allowed your competitors to publish a blog on their website and ask them if they’d be willing to do another contribution. This method will get you awesome editorial links for your site.

To learn more, see our complete guide on guest posting.

Finding Backlink Opportunities with Link Intersect Tool

Ahrefs introduced the Link Intersect tool a while back. It’s pretty neat and gives you a list of websites linking to your competitors.

If someone is linking to your competitors, they’d likely agree to link to you if you have better content.

All you have to do is inject 2 – 3 of your competitors’ URLs in this tool and it will show you websites that are linking to them but not to you.

Don’t Ask For a Link in Your First Email

Asking for backlinks in your first email can backfire. We won’t say that it doesn’t work, but sometimes, people get offended by straight-up requests.

In our experience, feeler emails tend to perform better than a direct pitch. This is also the case with follow-ups. People take you seriously if you send a second email because it shows that you really want to interact with the website owner.

But then again, it all depends on your judgment. Sometimes, sending out a direct pitch works well too. It’s better to try both approaches and see what works for you.

Always Follow Up to Your Emails

A good SEO is also a good marketer. And one of the greatest traits of a good marketer is the ability to follow up on emails.

Most times, people miss out on emails or just don’t bother replying for whatever reasons. Your job as a content marketer is to be persistent, not to the extent that you end up in their block list, but just enough to get a response out of them.

A single follow-up email should do, though I’ve seen people succeeding after at least 4 follow-ups to their emails. It just depends on your approach and offer.

Building Backlinks: Over to you

I hope this guide has taught you about backlinks and their importance. I’ve poured all of my backlinking knowledge into this guide. Let’s take a quick look at everything we learned:

Key Takeaways

• Understanding the Importance of Backlinks: Recognized as one of the top three ranking factors by Google, backlinks act as a vote of confidence from one site to another, boosting your SEO.
• Characteristics of High-Quality Backlinks: Focus on obtaining backlinks that come from authoritative websites, include relevant keyword-rich anchor texts, and are do-follow links from unique referring domains.
• Creating Link-Worthy Content: Invest in producing high-quality content that serves as a Link Magnet. This includes research-based content with original data, comprehensive list posts, tutorials, and in-depth guides.
• Proven Link Building Techniques:
  • Resource Pages: Target resource pages related to your topic for potential backlinks.
  • Broken Link Building: Identify and replace broken links on other sites with your relevant content.
  • Link Roundups: Get featured in weekly or monthly roundup posts within your niche.
  • Reverse Image Search: Use this method to find and reclaim uncredited use of your visual content.
  • Engaging in Outreach: Develop personalized outreach emails to site owners, clearly stating the value your content adds to their resources.
• Leverage Tools for Efficiency: Utilize SEO tools like Ahrefs for discovering link building opportunities and managing your backlinks.

But if you still feel that we might have missed something, then feel free to let us know in the comments below.

Do share your case studies after you have practiced our link building guide.

You might also want to check out our guide on affiliate marketing.

And don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter for more helpful blogging tips!